How to Destroy a Hard Drive

Destroying a hard drive can be accomplished with home remedies, i.e., shooting it with a gun, drilling a hole in it, or throwing it in a fire pit.  More commercial methods of destruction of a hard drive include shredding and crushing. Government and NSA sanctioned methods for destroying a hard drive are disintegration, pulverization, incineration, and shredding.  Because of the permanency of these destruction methods, they are utilized when the media is at the end of its life cycle.

Although all of these hard drive destruction methods physically alter the casing of the hard drive, unfortunately, they do little to purge the media of the confidential data contained on the hard drive itself.  Physically destroying the media does not remove the confidential data from the hard drive disk platters.  Because of this, certain government mandates and the NSA require that hard drives must first be purged or degaussed before the media is released for physical destruction.

Degaussing is the process of exposing the medial to a strong magnetic field to eliminate all data from working and non-working hard drives and tape.  Degaussing is the magnetic destruction of a hard drive. Degaussing, however, does not alter the physical appearance of the hard drive.

In almost all situations, commercial and government hard drive physical destruction methods require utilizing a third-party vendor to transport the media from its secure location to the site of the physical destruction equipment.  Removing the media from its secure location before being purged of the confidential data and handing the media over to an outside vendor creates a significant risk of a data breach. For this reason, the NSA requires the media to first be degaussed before being handed over to a third-party vendor.

The Perils of Hard Drive Shredding

When it comes to hard drive shredding, looks can be deceiving. A hard drive that has been shredded into fragments looks obliterated but retrievable data still exists. A degaussed drive, on the other hand, may look untouched but data is completely sanitized and no longer exists.

How does a shredder work?

A shredder works by lining up rows of metal teeth which cut the hard drive casing and platters into multiple, sometimes small. However, there is no standard as to what constitutes “shredding” a hard drive. Some shredders only cut the hard drive in half.

Hard drive shredders are filled with moving metal parts and are heavy. Many weigh over 1,000 pounds (453 kg) and are difficult to transport to secure locations. When shred trucks go to the facility, the hard drive shredder usually remains outside.  The media needs to leave its secure environment to be brought to the truck which creates an opportunity for loss during transfer.

Shredding hard drives alone leaves data behind

Hard drives are filled with sensitive data, from clients’ social security numbers and financial information to nuclear weapon plans. Hard drive shredding is a commonly utilized way to physically destroy a hard drive.  A hard drive shredder mangles the hard drives so that thieves will be less inclined to attempt to retrieve the data contained on the shredded remnants, but it does not destroy. Shredding a hard drive is insufficient for today’s technology, a modern hard drive stores 600,000 pages of data on a 2 millimeter-wide shred particle. That’s a particle smaller than a grain of rice!

Is my shredded data safe?

The common misconception is that shredding media renders the data unrecoverable. However, shredding or physically destroying the media does not remove the data from the hard drive disk platters because data is stored magnetically. Data is retrievable from large pieces of a shredded drive with the use of internet-available software and tools and even smaller pieces of shredded hard drive can be read with the use of magnetic force microscopes (MFMs).

What is degaussing?

Degaussers, like the Garner TS-1XT NSA listed degausser,  erase data by generating a powerful magnetic field that permanently removes the magnetic properties on the disk platters or tape. Degaussing erases all recorded data patterns on the media. Degaussing (demagnetizing) of approximately 10,000 gauss or more eliminates all data from both working and non-working hard drives and tape. Hard drives are rendered unusable after being degaussed but are recyclable for their components.

Garner Product’s degaussers produce a magnetic field to ensure complete sanitization of all sensitive data on magnetic media, such as hard drives and tape. To start degaussing, simply place the media in the degaussing chamber and close the drawer or door (depending on the model). In seconds, a strong magnetic field will encompass the entire media, sanitizing it completely. After degaussing, magnetic hard drives and some tape are unusable.

Shredding after degaussing

For non-NSA purposes, degaussing is a method of data destruction requiring no further action because the data is gone. A degaussed drive is a sanitized drive and can be disposed of without the need for further steps. Shredding after degaussing is not necessary for non-NSA purposes but is still considered a best practice to dissuade data thieves.

NSA Data Sanitization Requirement

Because there are data remnants on a shredded hard drive, the National Security Administration (NSA) requires media to be degaussed before the media is released for shredding or physical destruction. This two-step process ensures complete data destruction and terminates the risk of a data breach.
Read more about NSA listed degaussers.

According to the NSA standards, hard disk drives that have been degaussed must also be physically damaged by deforming the internal platters “by any means.” This means that a hard drive may be crushed, punctured, broken, or otherwise destroyed. The only caveat is that the internal platters must be damaged and not just the external casing of the drive. According to NSA standards, a degaussed drive should be shredded or destroyed.

Environmental impact of shredding vs degaussing

An HDD is made of several materials including steel, aluminum, various plastics, gold, and copper. Ground up, these materials are hazardous to breathe. A shred truck that turns hard drives into small particles must have a negative pressure vacuum system to contain the shredded particles that are hazardous to the lungs. These particles are not recyclable. Garner Products manufactures degaussers and destroyers, which bend, break and mangle hard drives following degaussing. Garner’s degaussers and destroyers do not create toxic byproducts and the hard drives are recyclable after the data is destroyed. Read more about our sustainable practices.

 So what’s the takeaway?

• Shredding destroys the media, but not the data
• Shredded fragments of hard drive recoverable data
• Degauss before you shred!

What is Degaussing?

Why degauss over other methods of data sanitization?

Degauss because other methods of data sanitization are slow, not secure, or are toxic to the environment.

Degaussing vs Overwriting

Like degaussing, overwriting is frequently called a “clean” method of data erasure because it is powered by electricity and does not release any hazardous byproducts. However, unlike overwriting, which takes from hours to days to overwrite a single drive, degaussers can destroy all data on multiple pieces of media in approximately 1/10th of a second. Of great importance, degaussing also sanitizes drives regardless of whether the drives are functioning. Overwriting requires fully functional drives and will fail to overwrite any part of a drive that is damaged.

Degaussing vs Incineration

Incineration is an effective data sanitization technique for magnetic hard drives but only if the incinerator exceeds 670°C, according to the NSA.  Understandably, data sanitization at these temperatures generally requires a smelter and creates waste and byproducts that are toxic to humans and the environment. Degaussing creates no hazardous waste nor byproducts.

Degaussing vs Shredding

Shredding media, although a common practice, unfortunately, is an incomplete sanitization method because it leaves retrievable data on the shredded pieces of media. This is a concern because a modern hard drive can store 600,000 pages of data on a 2 millimeter-wide shred particle. That’s a particle smaller than a grain of rice! Because degaussing leaves no data behind, best practices dictate that media first be degaussed before it is shredded.

Garner Products Degaussers

Garner Products has been manufacturing innovative degaussers since 1959. Our degaussers generate at least 10,000 gauss, about double what is necessary to sanitize modern hard drives and tape. In fact, the Garner TS-1XT 20,000 gauss degausser meets NSA standards for complete sanitization of Top Secret data.

Garner degaussers are roughly the size of a CPU and weigh between 34-105 pounds with either a convenient media drawer or a media slot and slide for high-volume jobs. Garner is an American-made manufacturer with in-house capabilities for customizing our data destruction equipment to meet your unique applications.

Garner leads the data destruction industry in product safety by being the first and only U.S. hard drive degausser and destroyer manufacturer to earn certification of our products to UL, IEC, and CSA safety standards from a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). 

Our products are also independently tested for conformity to CE standards for safety and emissions for the European Union.

These U.S. and international certifications identify Garner’s products as safe to operate in data centers, hospitals, offices, and other sensitive environments around the world.

Which Garner degausser is right for me?

All Garner degaussers are effective for erasing modern hard drives and tape. Garner manufactures degaussers of 10,000 gauss (1 tesla) up to 20,000 gauss (2 tesla).

TS-1XT Degausser

• NSA/CSS Listed
• 20,000 gauss (2 tesla)
• 15 seconds charge time
• Up to 1,300 hard drives per hour

HD-3XTL Degausser

• 10,000  gauss (1 tesla)
• 3 seconds charge time
• Up to 4,500 hard drives per hour

HD-2XT Degausser

• 10,000  gauss (1 tesla)
• 8 seconds charge time
• Up to 1,920 hard drives per hour

Degaussing is peace of mind.

It obliterates the data on hard drives and tape in seconds, meaning you never have to worry that the data will be recovered, not even through advanced forensic methods. By degaussing decommissioned media in-house you will ensure that the data is gone forever and will never fall into the wrong hands.

How to Erase a Hard Drive

Technically the word 'erase' in this context means to “remove” recorded matter from a magnetic medium, or to “delete” from computer storage, per Merriam-Webster.   As a matter of industry practice, the word ‘erasure’ has come to mean overwriting in the media disposition industry.

Overwriting is a method where a random pattern of usually ‘1’ and ‘0’ is written to every part of the drive, frequently three times, to obliterate the underlying data.  The advantage of this method is the drive can be re-used, and for most practical purposes the original data is not recoverable.  The disadvantages of this method are: it takes a skilled operator to ensure that the overwriting is done correctly for a given manufacturer and version of the drive; it takes a considerable amount of time-hours, and therefore electricity to do; and it is not regarded as failsafe, or permissible for the highest data security standards such as the NSA, CIA, or DoD.

In a broader context of the word erasure, there are other ways to remove the data from a magnetic device, or to make it inaccessible.  Many entities encrypt their data, and then you only have to destroy the key to the algorithm, and the data cannot (theoretically) be recovered, making it inaccessible.

Another permutation is Secure Erase, which is an overwriting protocol that is built into some drives at the factory and is supposed to work like an external overwriting program mentioned above.  In theory, using the factory-installed Secure Erase function alleviates the need for a specially trained technician to match the program to the drive/version; in practice about a quarter of Secure Erase programs have proven to be faulty and drives were released with data intact.

The optimal solution is to degauss the magnetic storage device as degaussing eliminates the data-there is nothing to recover as the magnetic field that was the data, simply no longer exists. This renders the drive un-useable as all the track and sector information is gone as well.